Author
Topic: The Brawler Mod (Read 2259 times)

Misery, captain of things regarding to balance, is convinced that more bullet-hell is the path to success. I believe that it is because he is good at this game. I, on the other hand, am not good at this game. So, in order for me to get up out of bed every morning and not always be crying, I've started this mod to make the game more brawleresque.

ReleasesVersion 1 is attached to this post. Woohoo!Just unzip it into your Starward Rogue directory.Uninstallation instructions are in the zip. If it scrambles your install, I have no idea how you accomplished that. Delete and reinstall would be the least technically challenging solution.

The PlanI'm going to update this post with the changes as I plan them and implement them. Also, to encourage viewer participation I will narrate my adventurers in XML. At some point I might stream it.

(Can you imagine, Scene 123 hour 304, You see a motionless screen of text with a voice over pleading, "Why is this not loading, WHY? Where is the syntax error." This repeats for about 10 minutes. Followed by the glorious moment when of the changing of the </die> tag on line 2345 to <die/>. This would take place in glorious 420 resolution because I work on a potato powered computer.).

Current Planned Changes

Buy Misery defibrillator, if it isn't too late already.

Buy bucket to collect tears.

Add EnergyShards.

Add Energy Potions.

Drop health levels on all mechs.

Revamp energy items to be more overpowered.

Revamp consumables to be more overpowered and add multiple uses.

Revamp existing game entities and systems to be more brawleresque.

Add combo counter system

Modify speed

Increase Hyperbole!

Current Functional (or Mostly Functional) Changes

Add Shield regeneration in rooms.

Add Health regeneration between rooms.

Add Energy regeneration in rooms.

Create Brawler variants for each mech.

Increase Player hitbox

Progress: The Adventure

Day 1

Started project description thread.

Added awesome humor to thread.

Agonized over if project will split community

Agonized over spending time on project instead of finishing Reanimator Boss

Second attempt will use Modifiers to add Effect with duration flipping

Got distracted by wondering why the Keymaster and Keyprentice code doesn't work all of the time. It uses <effect timing="OnUse" targeting="Player" type="ChaneCurrentInventory" related_item="Keycard" magnitude="20" />, which I think should work.

Saw that gameentity items has a hitbox, which means I can increase it to do roomwide pickups of items.

Note: This post contains content that is meant to be whimsical. Any belittlement or trivialization of complex issues is only intended to lighten the mood and does not reflect upon the merit of those positions.

What is Brawler to you? Because I don't see how your current mod changes do what I think of when I think of Brawler. In other words, what is the goal, without using the word "brawl" to describe it.

For Brawler to work, I'd assume something like the following:1) Hitbox on player goes back to larger size, because you aren't supposed to be able to dodge shots as easily.2) Likewise, player mech speed reduced ~10%. Sprint reduced even further? No walking?3) Health on players goes up, at least x2, so you can absorb all the damage you'll be taking. Likewise, less health shards are needed to gain +1 max hp.4) Non-boss mob health goes WAY up, and goes up even more every floor. Base hp x(1.5 + floor#).5) Boss health goes up, base hp x(1 + 0.5*floor#).6) Killing an enemy gives you a 10 second window to kill another to count toward your kill chain. You get bonuses based on how many kills you get. 3 kills regens back 1 shield, 5 kills drops credits, 10 kills give extra XP, 15 kills drops a key, etc. Move fast and you can carry your chain between rooms.

But regen in rooms is bad. It slows the game down. A brawler doesn't involve sneaking around and waiting. You get in their and blow stuff up damnit! None of this "wait, 2 more hp!"

Hmm.. Not sure. Sprint/Run is a standard action in later revisions of the games. I'm okay with it right now. Perhaps lowering speed would be okay, I'm not sure and it depends on how the game feels once I get the first batch of changes down. But your point is well taken.

Quote

3) Health on players goes up, at least x2, so you can absorb all the damage you'll be taking. Likewise, less health shards are needed to gain +1 max hp.

Hmm... Not sure about this. Regenerating shields and life will take care of part of this, along with the current health drops system. "Pulling back" in the middle of a fight to regen should function. If you have large health bars then you'd never die. With the retreat to catch your breath system, you are fine, unless you take too much damage in a short period of time.

Quote

4) Non-boss mob health goes WAY up, and goes up even more every floor. Base hp x(1.5 + floor#).

They do already actually. I can scale it further, but I'd need to see how the game feels first.

Quote

5) Boss health goes up, base hp x(1 + 0.5*floor#).

They do already actually. I can scale it further, but I'd need to see how the game feels first.

Quote

6) Killing an enemy gives you a 10 second window to kill another to count toward your kill chain. You get bonuses based on how many kills you get. 3 kills regens back 1 shield, 5 kills drops credits, 10 kills give extra XP, 15 kills drops a key, etc. Move fast and you can carry your chain between rooms.

Hmm... I dunno. I think I could see how that could be implemented, but it isn't in my main line of thought now. If this starts working and you think it still would be nice, I could still do it. I'll put it down as future option.

Quote

But regen in rooms is bad. It slows the game down. A brawler doesn't involve sneaking around and waiting. You get in their and blow stuff up damnit! None of this "wait, 2 more hp!"

Hmm. I'm not convinced. I play too much of a game called DFO. It is a RPG/Brawler/Beat'em up/FreetoPlay/MMO/with robots/with clowns/with turtles. It has passive regen and potions and a combo system. Regen is okay. Again though, we'll see. More importantly, once I have it functioning, I can set it so that people can try for themselves with and without it.

« Last Edit: February 11, 2016, 06:29:03 PM by ptarth »

Logged

Note: This post contains content that is meant to be whimsical. Any belittlement or trivialization of complex issues is only intended to lighten the mood and does not reflect upon the merit of those positions.

Just as a note: Increasing the size of the hitbox on the player mech will make some patterns basically undodgable. Particularly as I've started altering a few to account for the smaller one. Some of them were tuned a bit weird at first because of the bizarre hitbox size. The game will be mostly doable on Normal, but on Hard mode it's going to be an issue (Terminus's final attack, for example, probably isnt dodgable at all with that, Staccato's hard mode attack is NEARLY undodgable with it in some formations).

And I'll again point out, as he did, the "regen is bad" bit. For nearly all players, it *will* just slow down the game as they stand behind blocks waiting a bunch. Not just HP regen, but energy or shields will do the same. And "brawling" doesnt involve standing around, that's for sure. You'll end up just giving people the opposite of what they think a brawler game should be. Everyone knows you dont regen in a brawler. You break a phone booth and then eat the hamburger that it just dropped on the ground while ninjas continue to leap around the screen. THAT is how you heal in a brawler. It makes such a wonderful lack of sense.

Anyway, regen step is completed and functional. Currently set at 5 seconds for shields at 15 seconds for health. The regen is based on absolute clock time as opposed to when you took your last damage, so you will get instances of taking damage immediately followed by a shield regen. If the idea works out then I can switch to a fancier system method.

Hitboxes were upped to 11. I think that's what they were, but I'm not sure. It looks about right. The head of the mech isn't square. Perhaps I'll increase it to total body size instead.

Something I did caused energy systems to spawn on top of my head instead of on my left shoulder. I couldn't reproduce it.

I'll add the code to the remainder of the mechs and post that here next.

Logged

Note: This post contains content that is meant to be whimsical. Any belittlement or trivialization of complex issues is only intended to lighten the mood and does not reflect upon the merit of those positions.

Note: This post contains content that is meant to be whimsical. Any belittlement or trivialization of complex issues is only intended to lighten the mood and does not reflect upon the merit of those positions.

Note: This post contains content that is meant to be whimsical. Any belittlement or trivialization of complex issues is only intended to lighten the mood and does not reflect upon the merit of those positions.

The prototype is fully playable. The next step is just balance, polishing some things, and then modifying existing content. If the entire premise of the mod interests you then the prototype is sufficient to see if you actually do want to use it.

Logged

Note: This post contains content that is meant to be whimsical. Any belittlement or trivialization of complex issues is only intended to lighten the mood and does not reflect upon the merit of those positions.